Difference between Pi-hole and regular DNS resolver?

General
1

Hi everyone

I am new to Raspberry Pis and Pi-hole.
I'm considering using Pi-hole, but I have a question.

Can someone explain what additional features does Pi-hole provide compared to a regular DNS resolver like Unbound.

Currently I am using Unbound to block access to certain domain names. You can configure local-data entries like this:

server:
  local-data: "facebook.com. 1800 IN A 127.0.0.1"
  local-data: "9gag.com. 1800 IN A 127.0.0.1"

I use a script to generate a file like this from online block lists.
Ex: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts

Sorry if the question is stupid, I haven't used Pi-hole before, so I'm curious what is the benefit of using it standalone or using it together with a DNS resolver like Unbound.

4

The benefit would be that

  1. you wouldn't need a custom script to import "adlists" like
  1. Can choose different Blocking modes (Blocking mode - Pi-hole documentation)
  2. Can configure blocking on per-device/group level (Overview - Pi-hole documentation)
  3. Block domains based on regular expressions (Overview - Pi-hole documentation)
  4. Get a nice web interface with a lot of stats and the possibility to configure it from there (GitHub - pi-hole/web: Pi-hole Dashboard for stats and more)
  5. A lot more...
    ...
    Still can use unbound as Pi-hole's upstream DNS server (e.g. for local recursive resolution)
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5

Filtering and logging. We filter from either public adlists to which you subscribe, or from local domain entries that are unique to your installation. When you subscribe to public adlists, we automatically pull in the domains (and update them weekly), so you don't have to have a script which fetches them.

We also provide history and statistics for DNS traffic through various logs and dashboard displays.

We also provide group management, so you can tailor your filtering for different client groups.

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